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[However, Kennedy adjusted the numbers to account for undecided black voters, who overwhelmingly vote for Democrats, and said the runoff election currently stands in Blanco's favor. With that adjustment, Blanco would get 53 percent of the vote, compared to Jindal's 47 percent]
Republican Primary Trial Heat (among Republican voters): Cecil Underwood 30% Robin Capehart 8% Sarah Minear 8% Dan Moore 3% Monty Warner 3% Doug McKinney 2% Other 3% Undecided 43%
Democratic Primary Trial Heat (among Democratic voters): Joe Manchin 46% Darrell McGraw 11% John Perdue 5% Jim Humphreys 4% Lloyd Jackson 3% Jim Lees 3% Spike Maynard 2% Robin Davis 2% Other 1% Undecided 25%
The test tube of botulinum presented by Washington and London as evidence that Saddam Hussein had been developing and concealing weapons of mass destruction, was found in an Iraqi scientist's home refrigerator, where it had been sitting for 10 years, it emerged yesterday.
David Kay, the expert appointed by the CIA to lead the hunt for weapons, told a congressional committee last week that the vial of botulinum had been "hidden" at the scientist's home, and could be used to "covertly surge production of deadly weapons".
Since then, the discovery of the vial has been at the heart of the debate over prewar claims that Iraq had an arsenal of banned weapons.
It was cited in justifications of the invasion by President George Bush and by Britain's foreign secretary, Jack Straw, who described botulinum toxin as "15,000 times more toxic than the nerve agent VX".
Mr Straw claimed after the report came out that it presented further "conclusive and incontrovertible" evidence that Saddam had been in breach of UN resolutions. He said the report confirmed how "dangerous and deceitful" the regime was and that the military action was "both justified and essential to remove the dangers".
The US state department even argued that the discovery of the test tube meant that Mr Kay's Iraq Survey Group (ISG), contrary to its own claim, had found a weapon of mass destruction. However, newly disclosed details about the circumstances in which the botulinum vial was found, have raised fresh questions about its significance.
While presenting his progress report to Congress, Mr Kay did not say when and where the botulinum had been hidden but he told a television interviewer on Sunday that the scientist involved said he was asked to hide the botulinum in his refrigerator at home in 1993. Iraq admitted pursuing a biological weapons programme to UN inspectors two years later. It is unclear whether the Iraqi scientist had received any orders from the regime after that date.
It is also unclear whether the vial contained the bacteria botulinum, from which the toxin is drawn, or the toxin itself, as Mr Kay claimed in interviews over the weekend.
Furthermore, the most lethal form of the germ is the A strain, while the form found by the ISG was the B strain.
Mr Kay admitted that "we have not yet found shiny, pointy things that I would call a weapon", but he insisted there was plenty of evidence of Saddam's intentions to reconstitute weapons programmes once free of international scrutiny. He said the scientist who had the botulinum toxin in his refrigerator had also been entrusted with many more strains of biological weapons, including anthrax, but had given them back "because he said they were too dangerous; he had small children in the house".
More evidence of such programmes was included in a 200-page classified version of the 13-page report made public, but experts in the ISG, including former UN inspectors, have so far not been allowed to read the classified version, according to one of their former colleagues.
The refusal to allow ISG experts to read a report on their own work adds weight to suspicions that the report has been manipulated. "They're under huge pressure to come up with whatever," the ex-colleague said.
Mr Kay has said privately the report's publication was held up for about two weeks while more work was done on it at CIA headquarters.
He says the ISG will need up to nine months to complete its search, and his 1,200-strong team is following up an abundance of leads, including the claim by the Iraqi scientist that he had been asked in 1993 to look after anthrax and other biological agents.
Mr Kay also said the ISG had found some evidence to support the British government's prewar claim that Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Africa. That claim had been undermined by the discovery that a letter purporting to be an offer by the Niger government to sell uranium to Baghdad turned out to be a fake.
But Mr Kay said: "We have found a document that is an unsolicited - as far as we can tell - proposal to sell uranium to them from another African country, not Niger. And we're continuing- that's an active area of a current investigation." - Source
US President George W. Bush said he hoped that the FBI-led criminal probe into who leaked a CIA agent's identity would help plug other unauthorized disclosures to reporters.
"This is a serious charge, by the way. We're talking about a criminal action. But also hopefully we'll help send a clear signal we expect other leaks to stop as well," he said.
At issue is a US Department of Justice investigation into whether Bush aides leaked Valerie Plame's name to journalists in July to punish her husband, Joseph Wilson, for publicly challenging the case for war in Iraq.
White House officials and the president himself have rejected calls from opposition Democrats to name an independent investigator into the mushrooming controversy.
"I've got all the confidence in the world the Justice Department will be do a good, thorough job," Bush said during a joint press conference with visiting Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki. "I'd like to know who leaked."
The president has come under fire in some quarters for not launching an internal probe when the information came to light in July and for rejecting opposition Democrats' calls for an independent investigator.
"I take those leaks very seriously. And therefore, we will cooperate fully with the Justice Department," he told reporters Monday. "I want there to be full participation, because I am most interested in finding out the truth."
Bush sidestepped a question about whether the leak was retaliation against Wilson, saying: "I don't know who leaked the information, for starters, so it's hard for me to answer that question until I find out the truth."
"I mean, you hear all kinds of rumors, and the best way to clarify the issue is for full participation with the Justice Department," he said. - Source
At home, anxiety about the economy is escalating and respect for Bush is sinking. His domestic agenda has stalled in Congress.
Abroad, troubles in Iraq and Afghanistan have eroded Bush's traditional Republican advantage on foreign policy. His calls for international help in Iraq have gone unanswered. And in both countries, Americans continue to die in guerrilla attacks.
There is time, of course, for both situations to improve, and with them Bush's prospects. But for now, Bush has work to do avoid his father's fate: defeat after one term.
Complicating matters for Bush is the possibility of a full-blown scandal involving allegations that someone in his White House revealed the identity of a CIA officer out of political spite at the officer's spouse. The ensuing political firestorm, not to mention the Justice Department investigation, could further hurt Bush's standing.
"It's a feeding frenzy. ... They've just got to take the punches, make sure everybody is cooperating with the investigation and see where it goes," said veteran Republican strategist and informal Bush adviser Charles Black. "It's going to be a distraction for a while."
"They need to get a handle on these things," said Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va. "We have a saying around here - don't let your monkeys turn into gorillas."
There are no signs of panic among Bush supporters, but their heady optimism over Republican gains in the 2002 congressional elections, Bush's previous sky-high poll numbers and the swift fall of Saddam Hussein has given way to recognition that Bush could face a tough re-election contest.
If anything, recent problems have stripped away what was left of the national unity following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. With the country again deeply divided, Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie recently said that Bush faces a 2004 election much more like 2000's than Ronald Reagan's landslide in 1984.
"I'd just as soon not have the election today," said Black, "but we don't."
Indeed, Bush might need the next year to improve his fortunes. Americans are growing more skeptical of him as they worry about the state of their country.
The majority, 56 percent, now believes the country is going seriously down the wrong track, while 37 percent believe it is headed in the right direction, according to a new CBS-New York Times poll.
Most troubling for Bush is that Americans now rank the economy and jobs a far greater problem than terrorism. As long as Americans were more concerned about terrorism, they felt better about Bush, whose forceful leadership after Sept. 11 rallied people to his side. But only 37 percent approve of his performance on the economy, while 56 percent disapprove, according to the poll.
Bush faces problems on foreign affairs as well. Only 44 percent approve of his performance on foreign policy, while 45 percent disapprove. On Iraq, 47 percent approve while 48 percent disapprove.
Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, another informal White House adviser, predicts dramatic changes by Election Day - robust economic growth and relative quiet in Iraq - developments that even many Democrats acknowledge would probably secure Bush's re-election.
Neither is a sure bet.
Bush hailed a new report Friday that businesses added jobs in September for the first time in eight months. "Things are getting better," Bush said, speaking in Milwaukee.
But Bush knows too well that it can take time for people to feel better about the economy. On Election Day 1992, the economy was rebounding from recession, but lingering economic anxiety contributed heavily to the defeat of his father, President George H. W. Bush.
Job growth typically lags behind overall economic revival, and it has not yet become strong or sustained. Even with September's addition of 57,000 jobs, the unemployment rate remains at 6.1 percent, and the country still has nearly 3 million fewer jobs than when Bush took office.
Iraq is the other political wild card.
Bush's recent request for an additional $87 billion largely to shore up Iraq helped crystallize nagging questions many Americans had about the continuing deaths of American soldiers months after Bush flew triumphantly to an aircraft carrier to pose beneath a banner declaring "mission accomplished." A majority of Americans oppose Bush's $87 billion request.
It didn't help Bush that this week the top U.S. general in Iraq said "this is still wartime," and chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay reported that he has found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. "We have not found at this point actual weapons," Kay said. "It does not mean we've concluded there are no actual weapons."
Bush insisted Friday that Kay's report supports his invasion of Iraq. "Saddam Hussein," he maintained, "was a danger to the world." - Source Join our mailing list! - Home - Contact
A memo being circulated by a prominent Republican polling firm argues that GOPers run a serious risk of underestimating former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean (D) as a general election candidate against President Bush. [...]
Dean has leapt to the top of the polls in key primary states as well as the money chase by touting himself as the consummate outsider candidate in a field filled with Members of Congress.
“The difference between Howard Dean and the rest of the Democrat[ic] candidates is that Dean comes across as a true believer to the base but will not appear threatening to folks in the middle,” [Pollsters Bob Moore and Hans Kaiser of Moore Information] write. “We are whistling past the graveyard if we think Howard Dean will be a pushover.” [...]
Officials involved in Bush’s re-election campaign as well as several Republican pollsters say they long ago came to the realization that Dean was a political force that needed to be taken seriously.
“The Bush campaign is taking Dean seriously because they think he would do a better job of rallying the Democratic base than some of the other candidates,” said one Republican consultant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Dean gets their base voters excited.”
In an interview Friday, Moore agreed that “those who are fully engaged in the political process understand that [Dean] does represent a potential problem.” - Source
A few years ago an op-ed piece proposing the reinstitution of direct colonial domination of resource-rich countries by the world’s major capitalist powers would probably have been rejected on the grounds that it was too far-fetched and that imperialism was well and truly in the past.
It’s a sure sign of the times that this sort of proposal has been made in a comment published in the Financial Times last Friday.
Written by Deepak Lal, the James Coleman professor of international development studies at UCLA, it proposes the formation of an International Natural Resources Fund to organise the exploitation of the abundant natural resources of so-called “failed states”.
To call Lal an apologist for imperialism would be a major misstatement. He is an enthusiastic advocate.
As preparations for the attack on Iraq were building up last year, Lal delivered a lecture in October for the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, entitled “In Defense of Empires”. It called for the establishment of a global Pax Americana, with one of its central objectives being to create a new order in the Middle East.
“It is accusingly said by many that any such rearrangement of the status quo would be an act of imperialism and would largely be motivated by the desire to control Middle Eastern oil,” he declared. “But far from being objectionable, imperialism is precisely what is needed to restore order in the Middle East.” [See The Imperial Tense, Andrew J. Bacevich ed., p. 43.]
In his FT comment, entitled “A force to lift the curse of natural resources”, Lal widens his horizons. The “abundant natural resources” possessed by many of the “potential failed states”, he writes, have proved to be a “precious bane” rather than a blessing.
“The main reason for this is the strong temptation for anyone controlling the state to appropriate the rents from natural resources for their own purposes. The various civil wars in Africa, including the ongoing ones in Liberia and the Congo, are fuelled by the desire to control these rents. It was the rents from their oil that permitted Middle Eastern autocrats such as Libya’s Colonel Muammer Gaddafi, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Iran’s mullahs and the Saudi monarchs to pursue aims as diverse as funding global terrorism, the development of weapons of mass destruction and the export of Wahabism.”
Lal insists that these natural resource rents must be “depoliticised”. One way would be to distribute these revenues to the citizenry by writing cheques through the tax system. But that is not possible because these countries have no functioning state. Another possible measure would be to set up an extension of the Iraq oil-for-food program. But that is not possible because of “America’s understandable lack of confidence” in the UN.
Happily there is a solution at hand. Lal proposes that having served their original purposes, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank could be amalgamated and given a new role.
“They can call on the expertise of an international technocratic bureaucracy and, unlike the UN, are not subject to populist international pressure (though there may be doubts on this score about the present-day World Bank). And given their weighted voting systems, they are likely to be acceptable to the US. A conjoining of their staff to form an International Natural Resources Fund (INRF) would be thus desirable.”
The task of the INRF would be to “obtain the rents from the natural resources of the failed or failing states.” It would then place these funds in escrow accounts for use on social and economic infrastructure development projects in the countries in which they were generated.
As with all previous imperialist ventures, the proposal is presented as benefiting the inhabitants of the resource rich country. But it is clear where the real benefits would flow.
The projects financed by the INRF would be undertaken by major transnational companies, a large proportion of them US-based, which would receive contracts through an international bidding process. By such means “natural resources rents” would be de-politicised, diverted out of the hands of the various “failed states” and channelled by the INRF into the coffers of the world’s dominant companies.
For Lal, only one problem remains. What to do about “predators” attacking the mines and wells generating the rents?
“Here the military prowess of an imperial power or a coalition of such powers is crucial. Such a power could follow the example of China during the interwar period by leasing foreign companies territory that they could protect with their own police forces, in return for royalties to the INRF. But even this privatised solution would require the imperial power to maintain ‘gunboats and Gurkhas’ at the ready, in case some local predator decided to mount a challenge to the private controllers of the mines.”
Lal is by no means a lone voice in advocating new arrangements for the exploitation of the world’s natural resources. In a comment entitled “The curse of an oil economy” and published in the Baltimore Sun on October 1, David Quayat warns that in planning the future of Iraq, US administrators must look at other oil rich countries such as Venezuela where the “corrupt use of government resources created the climate that not only tolerated but encouraged the rise of Hugo Chavez, among the least democratic of Latin America’s leaders.”
The goal for the US-run Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq, he writes, must be “to prevent Iraq’s vast oil revenues from falling under the control of an elite cadre of leaders who can turn the country into a corrupt network of cronies.”
One way of preventing this would be to continue depositing oil revenues in a trust account to be administered by the United Nations and the CPA “until an Iraqi government proves capable of effectively and fairly managing such resources for the good of all Iraqis.”
It goes without saying that the final arbiter in deciding whether such a government had been created would be the US. And among the chief criteria in determining its “effectiveness” would be whether it had set in place “free market” mechanisms which ensured that the massive Iraqi oil rents started to flow to global, and above all, American corporations.
Throughout his writings, and especially in Capital, Karl Marx explained that the appearance-forms generated by capitalist society, uncritically accepted by bourgeois social science and used as the basis for its theories, stand reality on its head. Thus exploitation of human labour is carried out under the banner of freedom, while machines and land, not labour, appear as the basis of profit.
In the case at hand, we find a graphic expression of this “inversion” principle. Proposals for the reinstitution of direct imperialist domination of large sections of the world’s population—particularly those countries with valuable resources—are presented as relieving them of a “curse” and measures aimed at the enrichment of major transnational corporations are depicted as providing for the welfare of the inhabitants of “failed states.” - Source
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Sun Tzu Files 
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indicate whether the poll numbers are up or down from the previous poll. Incumbents are in italics. (prior results in '()')